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Shuna .
    While they discussed what they ought to do, Giles kept going up on deck to see if Susan had arrived on the landing-stage. The tide was coming up again now, but the ladders were still exposed. The mud smelt of stale fish. And no one came there, down the path through the trees. Another hour went by, and another. The Marshalls waited patiently, but Phillipa peeled some potatoes and reviewed her larder. Giles went on deck and stayed there.
    â€œSomething’s happened to him,” Phillipa said to her husband.
    â€œSeveral things, seemingly,” Tony agreed.
    â€œHe was knocked flat by Susan, for a start. Or as flat as he ever is, which means practically vertical.”
    â€œHe’d obviously met Mrs. Davenport before. Extraordinary woman, didn’t you think?”
    â€œWe agreed on that. It’s all rather upsetting. I mean the atmosphere in that house. Susan’s Cousin Henry gave me the creeps. So very affable, and really not there at all. It was like talking to a sleep-walker.”
    â€œDon’t work it up. Everything was all right until the wife came into the room and the buzzer went off between her and Giles. Incidentally Henry must have noticed. Perhaps that accounts for him being so detached afterwards.”
    â€œWhy don’t you get Giles to tell you about it? Do him a power of good. And it might clear the air for him over Susan. I have a feeling that particular angle ought to be encouraged.”
    â€œYou would,” said her husband. But he took her advice and joined Giles on deck. The latter began to give several very lame excuses for not going up to Tréguier that evening, the chief of them being that they had left it too late to have dinner there. Tony listened in silence and did not hide the fact that he found these explanations unnecessary. He tried to lead the conversation to the Davenports, but Giles was not drawn, and his friend failed to get any interesting details of his more remote past. He knew that Giles was often attracted to women and always professed to despise them. He realised now that his and Phillipa’s cheerful curiosity was out of place. The whole thing must be much more serious than they suspected.
    He managed to convey this to her before Giles finally joined them below for dinner. She was suitably impressed. The light-hearted holiday mood of the morning had vanished. And their surroundings had changed, too. The mist had not come back, but neither had the sun. The grey sky had turned the trees to a dull heavy midsummer green. The harbour wall and the cottages at Penguerrec were a harsh grey in the evening light. The wind had begun to sing in the rigging, and even where they lay in the river, little white-capped waves, whipped up by it, slapped at Shuna ’s topsides. The shipping forecast had given gale warnings for the whole length of the Channel.

Chapter Four
    The wind blew harder and harder all night, and by morning Shuna was rocking on a heavy swell, rolling in from the sea.
    Giles woke early, after a night of many disturbances. Both he and Tony had been up on deck several times in the dark hours, trying to locate and subdue some of the many noises produced by flapping ends of rope and rattling blocks. Even the soft, rubber-protected bump of the dinghy, tied fore and aft alongside, was maddening when endlessly repeated. After he could bear it no longer, Giles went up again, to alter the fenders and secure the warps more tightly. Then he wriggled into his sleeping-bag once more, to drowse fitfully until the grey morning light brought the day at last.
    By now the gale was at its height. The three listened in a gloomy silence to the shipping forecast. It gave them no hope of better things for the next twenty-four hours at least. They got up and dressed, and Phillipa made breakfast, surprised to find she was less upset by the movement of the boat now than she had been on the way over from England.
    â€œSea legs coming along nicely,